RUSSIA: Stalin's Hammer

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Moscow was gay and confident. Twice within the week gun salvos announced new successes. The Dnieper had been crossed. Kiev's recapture was near. The winter's chill breath was already upon the city, but nichevo—no matter. Victory was in the air and it smelled good after two cruel and distressing years.

The city put on a festive air. The streets were filled with officers and men in smart, bemedaled uniforms. The ballet, opera, concerts, plays, movies drew big crowds. Subway stations shone with bright pink paint; fresh plaster concealed the scars on bombed buildings.

Optimism. Moscow's confidence stemmed from more than armed victory. Cordell Hull and Anthony Eden arrived for the eagerly awaited conference with Viacheslav Molotov. With Hull, in four planes, came the new U.S. Ambassador, W. Averell Harriman, the State Department's experts on Russian, Baltic, Balkan affairs and the Secretary's friend and adviser James C. Dunn. Also among the arrivals were Major General John R. Deane, U.S.A., secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, and Lieut. General Sir Hastings Ismay, Winston Churchill's personal Chief of Staff. In Africa was U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau.

To the Russians, this assemblage bore promise of war's end. True, there was friction among the Allies, but it was not beyond repair. Indeed, open discussion of the friction might be a healthy sign. The Government's Izvestia ticked off samples of "developing cooperation": the recent food conference at Hot Springs, Va.; agreement on the economic rehabilitation of freed territory; the creation, at Stalin's suggestion, of the Inter-Allied Mediterranean Commission; the joint acceptance by the U.S.S.R., Britain and the U.S. of Italy's re-entry into the war as a cobelligerent.

The Big Three had been allied for two years. Yet this was to be their first mutual effort to determine the political bases on which the alliance could rest, the best ways to defeat the foe and assure a lasting peace. If the three ministers could agree, their chiefs could come together for the final talks.

Realism. Behind this hope loomed harsh realities. Foreign Commissar Molotov can be expected to shy away from pious phrases, present Russia's views and demands in hard, unequivocal words.

Molotov's foremost demand will be for the second front. Furthermore, this familiar demand will be the keystone of the whole Soviet position, a pressure point to be used in bargaining for other demands. Said Izvestia last week: "The question of a decisive shortening of the war is unbreakably connected with the opening of a second front. . . . When there is agreement on this primary question ... it will be easier to decide all other necessary questions."

Nothing less than a definite promise of earlier action than is now planned will satisfy the Russians. Whether Messrs. Eden and Hull can make such a promise is doubtful. Allied military specialists will be conferring at the same time, but even they probably cannot add much to the detailed information on Anglo-U.S. plans which the Russians already have.